AMERICAN HISTORICAL. ASSOCIATION. 



EUROPEAN HISTORY HAVE A PLACE IN 
THE COLLEGE CURRICULUM? 



BY 



CHARLES M. ANDREWS, Ph. D., 

PROFESSOR. BRYN MAWR COLLEGE. 



(From the Annual Report of tho American Historical Association for 1899, 

Vol. I, pages 539-548.) 



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XVII -SHOULD RECENT EUROPEAN HISTORY HAVE A PLACE IN 
THE COLLEGE CURRICULUM? 



By CHARLES M. ANDREWS, Ph. D., 
PROFESSOR BRYN MAWR COLLEGE. 



537 



SHOULD RECENT EUROPEAN HISTORY HAVE A PLACE IN THE 

COLLEGE CURRICULUM? 



By Charles M. Andrews. 



The object of this paper is largely controversial. I do not 
anticipate any radical changes resulting from its presentation, 
but by uttering a word of dissent I should like to disturb 
somewhat, if I may, the complacency with which historical 
students have placed the events of the last thirty years out- 
side the limits of serious historical study. No propositions 
in history would seem to be more certainly demonstrable than 
these: First, that the events of these thirty years are not 
within the scope of historical treatment; secondty, that in 
consequence no self-respecting historical writer would con- 
cern himself with the problems which these years have to 
offer; and thirdly, that no teacher who pretends to take a 
scientific view of historical development would consider him- 
self justified in attempting to deal with the subject. Are 
these propositions either scientifically or practically sound ? 

The chief reasons commonly alleged in support of these 
propositions are as follows: In the first place it is said that 
the year 1870 marks the close of a clearly defined historical 
period, one in which a specific set of issues was worked out; 
that the years since that time are but the first part of an 
epoch the end of which is not in sight and the characteristic 
features of which are at present so vague as to defy exact 
definition; and that this incompleteness renders such a period 
practically unavailable for historical study and presentation. 
In the second place, it is said that the material for such stud} 1 - 
is at present of such a character as to make scientific exami- 
nation impossible; that much of it is ephemeral, partaking of 
the nature of newspaper literature, while the real evidence 
upon which sound conclusions only can be based is still locked 

539 



540 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 

up in secret archives, there to remain until the various gov- 
ernments see tit to make it public. In the third place, the 
objection is raised that these years are too close to give us 
the proper perspective for even a narrative history and much 
more for an exposition which aims to explain as well as to 
record facts, inasmuch as the great problems are scarcely 
defined and only dimly perceived. And, in the last place, the 
contention is made that as the majority of those who would 
exploit this period have lived through the years they are 
studying, they are bound to be influenced unduty by preju- 
dice and partisan feeling, and, therefore, to be incompetent 
to present fairly and judicially the evidence at hand. 

Each of these objections is weighty, and each has a large 
foundation of truth upon which to rest. Each is sufficient to 
render futile any attempt to write of scientific purpose with 
a view to finality of treatment the history of any one of the 
European states since 1870, or to determine with precision the 
problems with which the historian of the future will have to 
grapple in dealing with the last thirty years of the nineteenth 
century. We do not know and we can not know what is the 
final word that posterity will pronounce upon this period of 
history, and while we can see dimly the nature of the prob- 
lems with which present society is wrestling we can not deter- 
mine their proportions, nor can we, with any certainty, forecast 
their solution. With such an attempt to treat recent histoiy 
I have nothing to do. The question I would discuss is as to 
whether recent European history should be made the subject 
of historical study, particularly in college classes. 

In the first place, what is the purpose and end of all histor- 
ical study and investigation ? Is it to train men in powers of 
criticism and insight; is it to make them more reasonable, 
cautious, and impartial; is it to awaken the imaginative fac- 
ulty and render the human mind more competent to interpret 
truly the thoughts and actions of past generations of men ? 
All these certainly are among the objects to be attained; but 
are these the only and final objects sought? I think not. The 
training of men's minds is itself not an end; it is the shaping 
of a more perfect instrument for the accomplishment of a 
further work. The more perfect instrument will fashion a 
more perfect product; the trained mind will produce the more 
accurate rendering of a past movement or series of move- 



RECENT EUROPEAN HISTORY. 541 

ments, but it is the more accurate rendering that is the end, 
and not the training that has made such rendering possible. 
Again, is such accurate interpretation of a phase of past his- 
tory the end and highest purpose of historical study ? A stu- 
dent by minute and special investigation, by the employment 
of accepted canons of criticism, by a truer appreciation of 
the motives which have actuated men and of the times in 
which they have lived, may bring forth a monograph upon a 
particular subject, may rewrite the history of a whole epoch, 
or may view from a new standpoint the whole of a nation's 
career. Are each or all of these the end sought, or is each 
but a means to the accomplishment of something greater still ? 
Do students of to-day recognize no higher aim than the pro- 
duction of the article, the monograph, or the book upon a 
particular subject? I think that they do. I think that the 
discovery of truth and the elimination of error, which is the 
essence and soul of all special historical investigation, is but 
the preparing of material to be employed in the production 
of something greater and more comprehensive. The histor- 
ical world needs the trained and methodical mind; it needs 
criticism and insight; it needs the exact fact and the honest 
interpretation, but it needs them for that philosophical syn- 
thesis of history, the summing up of all that history is and 
history means, which, as was said by the first president of 
this association at its first meeting, is ' ' the highest effort and 
noblest result toward which these special historical investiga- 
tions lead.' 1 

Now, admitting that historical training and method, histor- 
ical criticism and minute investigation, are but means to the 
attainment of this higher end, it is necessary that we deter- 
mine more exactly what form this historical synthesis should 
take, and its relation to our subject. Such synthesis is not 
merely a general history of the world, else the highest end and 
purpose would be a mere grouping of facts, and our interest 
in it would be the mere acquiring of information. The object 
of historical study is not the obtaining of an encyclopedic 
knowledge of facts. Nor is such synthesis the coordination 
and correct interpretation of any one set of facts relating to 
a given subject. The highest end and purpose of history is 
not to explain the development of political history, nor yet of 
constitutional, legal, administrative, religious, social, or eco- 



542 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 

nomic history. Each of these is but a part of a larger 

whole. 

Professor Burgess has concisely and accurately formulated 
the categories according to which we are to determine the 
form that the historical synthesis is to take. First, continu- 
ity in time; but that is not enough. Secondly, the relation 
of cause and effect; but that is not enough. Thirdly, the 
relation of cause and effect, plus the increment of progress. 
The highest end and purpose of history is, therefore, the syn- 
thesis of those facts and phases of history that mark the pro- 
gressive development of the human spirit. There are his- 
tories of nations and states, of institutions and constitutions, 
but above and over all is History which takes from each those 
particulars that have made for progress and weaves them 
into a nobler sequence. We study the Orient, Greece and 
Rome, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and Reformation, 
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the French Revolu- 
tion and the nineteenth century, in each case for its own sake, 
but still more in order to determine the part that each has 
played in producing institutions and ideas destined to shape 
the civilization of the ages that were to follow. Each period 
and epoch of history looks back to that which has gone 
before, and forward to that which comes after; and the char- 
acter of each is determined not by any one feature, political, 
religious, or other, but by that one or those several which in 
that period have done most to expand the human mind and 
enlarge the human capacity. 

But this view of the subject, which is the only logical view, 
and, therefore, the only scientific one— for history is a science 
because it is capable of logical treatment— demands that we 
ask one more question: If we study each epoch for the sake 
of the light it throws upon that which is to follow, and value 
the information acquired in proportion to its importance in 
explaining progress, what is the final goal toward which we 
are moving? It is inevitably and logically the better under- 
standing of the civilization of the present century, of the pres- 
ent day. There is no possible stopping point short of the 
present, for all history has been leading up to this, and in the 
highest sense of our science we study the past that we may 
better understand the present; not by making historical paral- 
lels or in framing arguments drawn from the careers of past 



RECENT EUROPEAN HISTORY. 543 

nations, but by tracing line by line and sequence by sequence 
the gradual unfolding of this development of human ideas and 
human institutions. It is only in this way that we can under- 
stand what we have and what we are. Logically the history 
of the nineteenth century is the culmination of all history; 
and if one phase of that history was finished in 1870 we must 
still say, if we would not have our synthesis shamefully incom- 
plete, that we study the period from 1789 to 1870 in order to 
understand better the character of the unfinished era in which 
we are now living. 

In view of this fact that the last thirty years are the most 
important years in all history and the logical goal toward 
which all historical study is directed, are the objections which 
have been raised sufficient to warrant the widely defended 
neglect of these 3^ears in the college curriculum? I do not 
think so. Two of these objections are supported by the argu- 
ment of incompleteness — in one case the incompleteness of the 
era itself; in the other, the incompleteness of the evidence. 
But an argument based on the incompleteness of the evidence 
is dangerous, for it can be raised against half the periods of 
history. No student of recent events could possibly err so 
frequently as did Kemble in his history of the institutions of 
the Anglo-Saxons; nor would he deliberately reject whole 
groups of evidence as did Niebuhr when he refused to use 
inscriptions, or Hume when he refused to examine newly dis- 
covered papers bearing on the history of the Stuarts. There 
is plenty of material accessible for a studj^ of the history of 
Europe since 1870, and it is by no means ephemeral, but 
official and reliable. Let it be granted, however, that the 
knowledge to be obtained would be incomplete. Is that a 
sufficient reason why the students who are graduated from 
our colleges should be kept in ignorance of the most impor- 
tant era in history ? The work to be performed by the college 
is not professional; it is educational Fifty years ago the cry 
was that too much time was spent on the history of those 
"brave men who lived before Agamemnon," and that the 
student knew more of Marathon and Herodotus, Sphacteria 
and Thucydides, Cannse and Polybius than he did of Napier 
and the Peninsular war, the reform acts, or the unity of 
Germany. I venture to think that the average reader, 
whether in college or out of it, finds his darkest ages to be 



544 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 

those years since 1870, and even it may be those since 1814, 
and that, too, in the face of the fact that he is a reader of 
newspapers .and a commentator upon current events. Is it 
any argument at all that the student should remain in dark- 
ness because the light that can be thrown be confessedly fitful 
and uncertain ? 

But two stronger arguments remain to be examined. First, 
that these events are too close to us to be seen in their true 
proportions; and, secondly, that even if we attempted to 
interpret them the version would be either perfunctory or 
biased. To the first objection I would answer, that if the 
point of view be that of to-day and the glance be backward, 
then the range is too close and the perspective will be 
destroyed. But no historical instructor or scholar studies his 
history backward. I am presenting no brief for "current- 
events" classes or for courses in the study of modern prob- 
lems; I am simply urging that the historical continuity which 
we study in the past be extended to its logical conclusion, and 
that is down to the present day. History has provided the 
proper range, and those events which seem confused and 
amorphous as we look back at them from the present will be 
found to take on an intelligent and orderly arrangement when 
approached from the standpoint that history itself has pro- 
vided—the standpoint of the past. Now, the historical 
instructor who knows his business teaches general history to 
1870 with his glance always forward; why, then, should he 
change his point of view in considering the history since that 
time ? He may not be a prophet in his diagnosis of the future, 
for history forbids prophecy, but he will be far better equipped 
by his knowledge of what problems have been solved in the 
past to trace the growing importance of those which are 
becoming the problems of the future. He may see the tend- 
encies dimly, but is it not a gain if he see them at all? Why 
should the student who leaves college to enter into the world 
of affairs be left stranded at the years 1870 or 1878 and never 
be brought to see that which he ought above all things to 
know, the connection between the Europe of yesterday and 
the Europe of to-day % The knowledge that he has obtained of 
the history of the past will fail of its highest value if he be 
not given this last connecting link. 
And now one word about the last objection. We are told 



RECENT EUROPEAN HISTORY. 545 

that the treatment of the history of so recent a period must 
of necessity be one sided and biased. I think that this would 
be true were the history written by one who has been an 
active participant in the affairs of the period. But we are 
also told that such an one ought to do the work; that he who 
knows diplomacy from the inside, who has sat in legislative 
chambers, has led troops in battle, or has been a banker, a 
merchant, or an employer of labor is more competent than 
the student to write of these things. I believe that there is 
a fallacy here somewhere, and that unless such persons be 
trained historians first and men of affairs afterwards they 
will produce very poor histories. Grote was a banker, Hodg- 
kin, Seebohm, and Lubbock are such still, but we do not 
trace to that training the excellence of the historical work 
that each has done. Sybel was for years a member of the 
Prussian Landtag, but there is no special reason to believe 
that his historical work owes its high character to the experi- 
ences there gained. Gardiner has never held political office, 
Firth has never been a soldier. That great scholar who has 
done more for the history of English law than any man living 
or dead was unable to succeed as a legal practitioner. The 
best history of the speaker has been written by a woman; and 
one of the leading authorities upon the battle of Waterloo 
and the battles of the civil war, whose name stands high abroad 
as well as at home, never saw a battle or heard a shot fired. 
That which is true of the past is also true of the present. 
The writer upon current history need not be and ought not 
to be a man of affairs. The historical lumber room is full of 
books; I do not refer to memoirs and recollections, but to 
historical treatises, which have been written by men who have 
mistaken their calling. But suppose that that worm, the mere 
student, the impartial investigator, should give his presenta- 
tion a twist, would he be doing more than have scores of writ- 
ers of past times, whose works are standards to the uncriti- 
cal public — Macaulay, Hume, Froude, even our own Bancroft? 
Such twist it is the business of the college instructor, if he 
do his work as he ought, to unwind, that all the strands may 
be straight. 

I have been endeavoring to show thus far that in failing 
to instruct students in the history of the last thirty years the 
college has not fulfilled one of its most important functions. 
hist 99, vol i 35 



546 AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 

My argument has thus far concerned what is the scientific — 
that is, logical — demand of the subject, against which no sound 
objections can be raised. Let me view the subject from the 
strictly utilitarian standpoint, from the standpoint of the col- 
lege's educational obligations. The aim of college instruction 
in history is neither to produce trained historians nor to 
impart mere information. It is to equip men with habits of 
thought that we may call scientific, and with an apparatus of 
knowledge which will have some bearing on the practical 
sides of life. Every man, whatever be his profession, has an 
interest in the world in which he is living, and in this country 
a growing interest in the affairs of the world across the sea. 
The American is losing his provinciality and is becoming, in 
the range of his intellectual interests, a cosmopolite. He 
must know not only the history of the country of which he 
is a citizen but also the history of those countries whose 
careers are becoming year by year of greater and greater 
importance to him. There never was a time, because of the 
changing material conditions under which we are living, 
because of rapid communication and transportation, and, 
above all, because of the changing relations into which this 
country is entering with the countries of the Old World, when 
the need to know and the desire to know what the Old World, 
is doing and why it is doing it was greater than it is to-day. 
Yet in the presence of this fact we are told that though his- 
tory may be a science and deserving of study and logical 
treatment up to the year 1870, it is after that date a mere 
handicraft to be learned, not under the guidance of a com- 
petent instructor, but in that worst of practitioner's offices 
for such a subject, the world of experience. Up to 1870 
history may be scientifically treated, after 1870 information 
regarding it must be got by an}^ haphazard method that hap- 
pens to be at hand. The student must learn this history from 
the newspapers, confessedly incomplete and partisan; from 
editorials written to support a policy, or from magazine arti- 
cles written to defend a cause. He is to be given no training 
in the interpretation of recent history, no warning against 
the dangers of hasty judgments, no word of caution concern- 
ing the equal danger of ultra conservatism. The student is 
taught to feel that he has left his real history behind him 
with the year 1870, and that what he has. learned of historv 



RECENT EUROPEAN HISTORY. 547 

in college has only a remote and not very tangible connection 
with affairs of to-day. I would not urge that the college 
instructor use his history as does the Prussian schoolmaster, 
to arouse a spirit of patriotism and of loyalty to his country. 
That is well enough, it may be, but it is not the true purpose 
of history. The college should make it possible for the 
student to read his newspaper with intelligence, to bring to 
his reading that attitude of skeptical reserve which will enable 
him to judge slowly and reasonably; to bring to his reading 
that knowledge of the events of the last century, of the last 
decade, of the last }^ear, and it may be of yesterday, which 
will enable him to determine what issues are vital and what 
are only incidental, to strike at the heart of a question and 
not to be misled by multiplicity of details. The newspaper 
of to-day— and I mean not only the daily, but the weekly, the 
monthly, and the quarterly — is often a trap for the unwary, 
and the amount of unintelligent comment upon current events 
is a characteristic of our present intellectual activity. And 
in such unintelligent comment there is a great waste of men- 
tal ability that ought to be better directed. 

Here is the field in which historical instruction in colleges 
can perform a practical and utilitarian work by virtue of 
which history will be able to defend its right to be considered 
a subject of real and immediate value to the unprofessional 
student. I do not mean by this that an instructor should 
become the exploiter of every new issue that arises, or should 
pose as an authority upon technical questions of international 
or public law. Far from it. I mean that in studying the 
past he should bring his tale of progress down to the present 
in such a fashion that the student will have the suitable his- 
torical background which the majority of the readers of 
to-day do not possess. College instruction should show not 
only the work of the French Revolution and its outworking 
in the first seven decades of the nineteenth century, but it 
should show the changing conditions, political, social, and 
economic, under which we have entered upon the new era. 
And it should go on to trace in unbroken sequence the chief 
tendencies of the present so far as an honest and impartial 
study of the material can disclose them. In such an exposi- 
tion mistakes will undoubtedly be made, but they will not be 
comparable with the errors of judgment that are made every 



548 AMEBIC AN HISTOEICAL ASSOCIATION. 

day in the newspaper editorial columns, and the hastily 
written magazine articles that are at the present time to the 
average man the chief source of information. College instruc- 
tion should, so far as the practical difficulties that lie in the 
wa,j can be overcome, act as a corrective to this, and the more 
completely this can be done the more completely will the col- 
lege have fulfilled the task which the subject imposes upon it. 
Historical instruction will also have justified its practical 
character, creating real values for the student and preparing 
him for a more intelligent understanding of the events in the 
issues of which he may be called upon to take part. And 
furthermore the college in so doing will have prepared the 
way for that school of diplomacy of which this country stands 
so greatly in need. 

The conclusion that may be drawn from this is as follows: 
Were European history of the last thirty years made the 
final stage in a course of modern history, beginning, let us 
say, with the French Revolution, or, if time allowed, even 
with the Renaissance and Reformation, the college graduate 
would face the world better able to understand the great 
events occurring in it, and at the same time better able to 
appreciate at their true value the unwieldy commentaries and 
statements with which he is daily confronted in the press. 
The French Republic would not fall so often before the man 
on horseback; the decline and fall of the British Empire, 
after the fashion of old Rome, would not be so often fore 
told; Italy would not be so often threatened with utter col- 
lapse; Austria-Hungary would not so often break up into 
fragments; the struggles of the lesser states — Norway, Bel- 
gium, Spain, and the Danubian principalities — would take on 
more orderly and intelligent form; and war, that frequently 
recurring universal war, would be more commonly discounted 
on its appearance in newspaper headlines. And, lastly, and 
perhaps most important of all, were a sounder knowledge 
possessed of the historical tendencies of the century in 
America and England as well as in the continental States, 
there would be, I venture to believe, among those of the 
next generation who have received their college training in 
this, fewer jingoes on one side and doctrinaires on the other. 



